


Donna: The Beta Reader

by nostalgia



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Breaking the Fourth Wall, Buffy the Vampire Slayer References, Crack, Fanfiction, Meta, beta readers, he's a slasher of course
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-12
Updated: 2011-11-12
Packaged: 2017-10-25 23:20:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,389
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/275960
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nostalgia/pseuds/nostalgia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which the Doctor writes some fanfic and Donna is Donna.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Donna: The Beta Reader

_Angel was so alone, so very alone. He thought back to his sad childhood in Gallifrey, which was in Ireland, and_

"I thought Gallifrey was in space?" Donna hovered her red pen over the offending statement and fixed the Doctor with a sceptical gaze.

The Doctor shrugged. "I wanted to give it a bit of colour."

"Right. Gallifrey. I'll let that one pass."

 _and how terribly lonely that childhood had been. No one could understand how incredibly alone he had been then and was now._

"Oh, bloody hell, is he going to whine about his pain for the whole thing?"

The Doctor sniffed. "Donna, if you don't have a constructive comment I'd prefer it if you didn't say anything at all. It's angst. A story about angst, and introspection, and Angel's place in an uncaring universe."

"Riiiiiiight." Donna wrote the word _WANKER_ in the margin of the printed story and read on.

 _But at least he was sexy._

"That's a bit of a whatdoyoucallit. Leap. Change of subject."

"But he is."

"Look, is this story about Angel's emotional pain or your homosexual leanings? Are you writing with your typing-fingers or your probably-tiny cock?"

The Doctor wanted to say something about how hurt he was and how much Donna was betraying his trust in her. He'd never let _Martha_ read his fanfic. Most likely Donna would just laugh if he said anything, so he didn't. "Just read it and make _constructive_ comments."

 _He had a lovely smile and a nice arse._

Donna laughed until she coughed.

The Doctor hastily deleted that bit from the story.

 _But he was alone. So alone. No one understood him. Not Buffy, or Kate, or Darla, or Nina, or that woman with the glowing spine, or Cordelia._

"Cordelia knew how to handle Angel," said Donna, approvingly. "She wouldn't put up with his shit. Not at first anyway. You knew they loved each other even when they were arguing. Oh, I loved it when she threw that water at Angelus!"

"Yeah, but she's human. How can a human ever really understand a vampire?"

"What, are you against interracial relationships or something?"

"He's a vampire! All those human women ever did is upset him by leaving him or dying or ascending to a higher plane!"

Donna drew a little red doodle of the Doctor falling off a cliff into a sea full of sharks. "Darla, then. Darla was good. They were soulmates. Well, when they had souls, at any rate."

The Doctor stood, or rather sat, firm. "No, she never really understood him. They had different ideas about what vampirism meant, and she didn't like his scarf."

Donna stared at the Doctor. "What?"

He blushed. "Nothing. I must have been thinking of some other fandom. But the point is that even Roma-... even Darla wasn't Angel's equal. Not really."

Donna read on.

 _What he needed was someone like himself. Someone who understood the way the world was, and who had struggled with morals and philosophies. Someone like... Spike._

"...Spike?"

"Yeah?" The Doctor was firm about his choice of pairing, prepared to defend it against any foolish disagreement.

"Spike's a wanker!"

"No, he isn't! He's Angel's only true equal! And their love for each other's really obvious to the viewer who's got a good handle on subtexts." He steadied the laptop on his knees and pushed his glasses up in a way that he felt sure made him look extra clever.

"What, even when Spike was evil and Angel was a whiney souled git?"

The last of the Time Lords stood by his ship. "Minor stumbles on the path to true eternal love."

 _Spike had such a nice arse._

"I'm sensing a bit of an arse theme to this story."

"Is that bad?"

"Well, you could mention something else there. Maybe his cock. I bet he's got a nice cock."

The Doctor nodded dreamily, and made the necessary corrections to his story. "Okay, I changed the arse to a cock."

"Good."

 _And his dark hair was_

"Spike's a blond."

"In this story he's stopped bleaching it."

"Why?"

"He just has."

 _like a soft field of eternal blackness._

"Are they going to shag?"

The Doctor was appalled. "You can't reduce my story to whether or not they shag! It's about the unhuman condition!"

"Do they, though?"

"...yes."

Donna flipped forward a few pages.

 _Spike leaned into his lover's cold touch, stroking his cock lovingly._

"Whose cock is he stroking?"

"Angel's, obviously. They're the only people in the story."

"You need to work on making it clear who's doing what to who and what bits are where. Like, this bit on page four. Who's gasping for air and who's lapping at cold dead seed?"

The Doctor nodded, willing to admit Donna may have a point on this aspect of the narrative. "Well, I didn't want to keep using their names. I was focussing on capturing the intense emotion of their coupling."

"Yeah, and you might want to find a better phrase than 'his turgid member.' Makes it sound like he's talking about parliament. And the cold dead seed thing's a bit off-putting."

The Doctor tapped out some notes. "Good points."

Donna skimmed some more of the text. "Anyway, Spike'd never cheat on Buffy."

The Doctor stared at her, open-mouthed.

Donna shrugged. "Well, he wouldn't."

"Of course he would! This is the only man who can ever truly understand him! You think some blonde human woman can ever do what another vampire could? He only married her to fit in with the humans!"

"Spike and Buffy never got married. There was that one episode where they talked about it, but that was because they were insane or possessed or something."

"Donna, are you questioning my knowledge of the Buffyverse? I know they never got married! I was... thinking of the sequel I plan to write." Phew, he might just have got away with it.

"Which of them's you?"

Or maybe not. "Pardon?"

"Which of them's you? Which is your Mary-Sue? Are you Angel? Is that why Angel's such a whiney little girl in this story? Do you want to fuck Spike? Are you having one of your gay days? Do you want me to text Martha and see if she can get Jack to do you up the arse?"

The Doctor blushed. "Neither of them are me! I don't write that sort of fanfic! I write intelligent, thoughtful prose which is, for your information, very well received on the internet."

Donna snorted. "Yeah, we all know what high standards the girls at fanfiction.net have."

"One of them sent me an iPod!"

"What do you write as? HornyTimeLord69?"

Oh, why not? Honesty was supposed to be very important in a relationship. "Josephine Grant."

Donna cackled. "Oh my God, you're Jo Grant? Her stuff's so shit! I remember when she got on Fandom Wank for that meta about how only Spike was good enough for Angel and she knew this because she communicated with them on the astral plane."

The Doctor shrugged defensively. "I only posted that for the lols."

"Sure you did, Josephine, sure you did."

"Anyway, how can you judge me when you read Fandom Wank? You... you... member of the Cult of Mean."

Donna grinned proudly. "Yes, I am. I've made fangirls cry and cut themselves."

The Doctor had a sudden thought. "Are you thegingerbitch on LJ?"

"Might be. Might not be."

"I'm not having a Spike/Darla shipper on my TARDIS! Pack your bags! Now!"

"Oh, don't be such a twat." Donna flicked to the end of the almost-forgotten slash epic. "God, this is such a girly ending. No wonder no one ever suspected you're a man."

"My people were beyond mere Human notions of gender."

"Can I call you Josephine from now on? Oooh, is that your real name? Jojo the girl-faced boy?"

"I knew it was a mistake asking you to beta for me."

"I can't wait to tell Martha about all this. She used to spork your fic under flock on LJ."

"What?!" No! Martha wouldn't! Not his Martha!

"Shush, Josie, I'm busy." Donna speed-texted like some sort of demon-thumbed techno-witch. The Doctor watched her impotently, knowing that this had completely ruined his Lonely God mystique.

The moral of the story, of course, is that you should never use a beta-reader under any circumstances ever.


End file.
